Electric and electrochemical properties of solid LiH2PO4

Electrical and electrochemical properties of solid LiH₂PO₄ conductor were investigated in the temperature range from room temperature to 373 K. It was found that high conductivity throughout the temperature range, with activation energy 17.23 kJ/mol, originates from the movement of hydrogen ions (protons). The movement of protons in the correlation with phosphate groups rotation was considered. The slopes of Tafel lines and exchange current densities both for cathodic hydrogen and anodic oxygen evolution were determined (by means of usual electrochemical kinetic methods) at various temperatures. The energy of activation at the equilibrium potentials both for the cathodic and the anodic processes have been assessed to be 17.23 kJ/mol (0.18 eV) and 2.9 kJ/mol (0.03 eV), respectively.     

The theoretical and experimental study of the ionization processes during the low energy ion sputtering

The process by which atoms are ionized as they are sputtered from a metal surface has been analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. In the theoretical part the expressions for ionization coefficient R⁺ of atoms having the ionization energy much larger than the metal work function have been derived using a molecular orbital method. The effect of the level crossing was estimated in an approximate way. In the experimental part the SIMS experiments on clean Ni and Al surfaces and on Ni surface covered with a submonolayer of adsorbed K, Na and Al are reported. It has been found and it is for the first time reported that the energy distribution of ions sputtered from a submonolayer of adatoms is independent of energy (200–2500 eV) and mass (Ar⁺ Xe⁺ of incident ions and depends only upon the adsorption energy of the adatom. The energy distribution of ions sputtered from bulk samples has been found dependent on the primary ion energy. The measurement of the absolute value of R⁺ has shown that there is a strong correlation between the number of the adatom valence d-electrons and the value of R⁺, the value of R⁺ being smaller for atoms with more d-electrons. These experimental data have been compared with the theoretical expressions and the important role of the mechanism which takes into account the bending of the adatom energy level has been assessed.     

Infrared picosecond absorption spectroscopy of microcrystalline silicon: separation between carrier recombination in crystalline and amorphous fractions

We have studied ultra-fast carrier dynamics of photo-excited carriers in hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon prepared by a very high frequency glow-discharge technique. We report on direct observation of two types of dynamics using selective photo-excitation in picosecond pump and probe measurements. One type of the observed dynamics has been found to be independent of the sample preparation, while the other reflects the relative weights of crystalline and amorphous fractions. We propose a simple rate-equation model that describes the carrier dynamics in microcrystalline silicon in terms of the composition of those in Si microcrystallites and in the a-Si:H tissue which surrounds the microcrystallites. The model without any fitting parameters reproduces the experimental data very well when the dynamics are scaled with relative volume fractions as obtained from Raman spectra. Received: 23 November 2000 / Accepted: 17 March 2001 / Published online: 23 May 2001     

A wider convergence area for the MSTMAOR iteration methods for LCP

In this paper, based on the Hermitian and skew-Hermitian splitting, we give a generalized modified Hermitian and skew-Hermitian splitting (GMHSS) method to solve singular complex symmetric linear systems, this method has two parameters. We give the semi-convergent conditions, and some numerical experiments are given to illustrate the efficiency of this method.     

Bi(Pb)–Sr–Ca–Cu–O layers prepared by a new method of laser ablation in air

Bi(Pb)–Sr–Ca–Cu–O layers were prepared by laser ablation in air, that is without using a vacuum chamber. At this method a much higher density of pulse energy of laser beam is required (10–30 J cm^–2) in comparison with the standard method (1–3 J cm^–2). The mentioned condition has specific effects on the nature of the transport of material from the target. As follows from the electron microprobe analysis of the layers, the starting composition of the transported material is identical with that of the superconducting phase sintered in the target; one exception represents Pb, the content of which in the transported material is lower. The image of the process is complemented by UV/VIS spectroscopy scans of the plasma plume.     

Zero–One Law for some Brownian Functionals

We prove that for a>0, (B _t) one-dimensional standard Brownian motion and ₀=inf{t>0 : B _t=0} the following zero–one law is valid

Problems of Dust Grains Charging to Negative Potentials

The presence of dust grains is a common phenomenon in the space environment. Grains can be charged by many different processes (e.g., photoemission, attachment of electrons/ions, the secondary emission, etc.). If the grain's surface potential becomes high enough, one can observe field emission of ions or electrons. We are trapping a single dust grain in a Paul trap, expose it to a low-energy electron beam, and investigate the evolution of its charge-to-mass ratio with respect to the energy of primary electron beam. We use micron-sized (D = 2–11 m) glass grains and charge them up to -300 V of surface potentials; it corresponds to the electric field strength of about 10⁸ V/m. Analysis of the charging/discharging processes has shown that (1) the effect of the field enhanced secondary emission is negligible in the case of insulators and (2) the effective work function for electron field emission from charged insulators is as low as 1 eV.     

Computing transitive closure of bipolar weighted digraphs

We define a bipolar weighted digraph as a weighted digraph together with the sign function on the arcs such that the weight of each arc lies between 0 and 1, and no two parallel arcs have the same sign. Bipolar weighted digraphs are utilized to model so-called fuzzy cognitive maps, which are used in science, engineering, and the social sciences to represent the causal structure of a body of knowledge. It has been noted in the literature that a transitive closure of a bipolar weighted digraph contains useful new information for the fuzzy cognitive map it models.In this paper we ask two questions: what is a sensible and useful definition of transitive closure of a bipolar weighted digraph, and how do we compute it? We give two answers to each of these questions, that is, we present two distinct models. First, we give a review of the fuzzy digraph model, which has been, in a different form and less rigorously, studied previously in the fuzzy systems literature. Second, we carefully develop a probabilistic model, which is related to the notion of network reliability.This paper is intended for a mathematical audience.     

Normal art galleries: Wall in – all in

We introduce the notion of a normal gallery, a gallery in which any configuration of guards that visually covers the walls necessarily covers the entire gallery. We show that any star gallery is normal and any gallery with at most two reflex corners is normal. A polynomial time algorithm is provided deciding if, for a given gallery and a finite set of positions within the gallery, there exists a configuration of guards in some of these positions that visually covers the walls, but not the entire gallery.